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She was terrified if he owned that part of her, then he would control her. Because if Lawe could change her, if he could force her independence to give way to his need to protect her, then he would do it in a heartbeat.
“The thought of losing you destroys me,” he suddenly whispered at her ear. “When I saw you in that filthy cell, beaten, almost broken, so delicate and so determined to live, you stole a part of my soul.”
Shock held her silent. To hear this strong, always so emotionally cool Breed say such a thing. Lawe wasn’t a man prone to give in to emotion. And most certainly, even for a Breed, he had seemed even more unwilling to experience emotion than most.
Keeping her eyes closed she could only hold tighter to him. There wasn’t a chance of hiding what she felt from him. His ability to smell emotion and recognize it was too good.
And she knew what he could sense from her.
The denial, a rejection of what he was offering her and the pain of being unable to reach out for it and hold it close to her.
“Why?” he suddenly asked, his face still buried in her neck. “Why don’t you want what I have to offer, Diane?”
She felt the tears that tightened her throat, and though she couldn’t smell scent as he could, and the pain wasn’t in his voice, still, she could sense it. It tightened her chest and sent an ache to burrow so deeply inside her that she knew she would never escape it.
“Because you refuse to accept who I am,” she whispered hoarsely. “You’re rejecting me as well, Lawe. The rejection is just deeper. I accept you for who you are. You refuse to do the same for me.”
His head lifted and drew back.
She was still pressed to the wall, his body still a part of hers and the pleasure . . . The pleasure still throbbed inside her from the presence of the barb as it kept her mate locked to her.
“Do you accept me for who I am?” he asked quietly, somberly. “If you did, Diane, then you’d help me.” His fingers touched her cheek, the backs of them caressing her flesh gently. “You’d help us both find a way to compromise. Instead, you run. And running will do nothing but destroy us both.”
As she stared back at him and battled the tears she had no experience with, Diane felt the barb slowly releasing her, retracting back into the hood of his cock and taking with it the echoes of rapture that held her in its grip. That held Lawe in her grip.
“Do you compromise, Lawe?” she whispered. “Because honestly, I haven’t seen any give in you that would indicate the ability.”
Dropping his head to her shoulder he bestowed a gentle kiss before slowly helping her to slide from him as he pulled the still semi-hard shaft from her pussy and stepped back.
“We’ll go to Window Rock,” he said softly, and Diane had to swallow past the hard surge of emotion that tightened her throat at the chill in his voice, because when he stared down at her, she could see the torment blazing in his eyes. “Be careful while we’re there,” he said as he released her fully. “Remember what happens to me, Diane, if anything happens to you, and vice versa. Because regardless of what you believe of me, from the day I realized you were my mate, I stepped back from active status. Because nothing meant more to me than your life, your health and your safety. I would have never fought ag
ain.”
He didn’t mention her happiness. Strangely, the fact that it was forgotten had the power to pierce her heart.
He didn’t give her a chance to reply. She couldn’t have replied anyway, because she was too shocked, too uncertain about the implications of what he had just told her and the emotion he hadn’t mentioned.
To a Breed, nothing was more important than the battle for safety, the battle to ensure that the Breeds, as a people, survived.
So much so that all unmated Breeds vowed an oath to protect, even at the cost of their own lives, all mates, male or female, until they too found their own unique biological, chemical and pheromonal match.
Unmated Breeds composed the majority of the Breeds’ fighting force. Once mated, they pulled back to operations rather than active status, or to the protective and security ranks of either the Feline Breed base of Sanctuary, the Wolf Breed base of Haven or the nearby, newly created Coyote stronghold of Citadel.
It was information she had to process, and Diane knew as she watched Lawe gathering her clothes together before he gathered his that now she had no choice but to face the decisions she had been running from.
The choice of accepting Lawe as her mate, and in doing so also accepting the loss of her freedom, or she could deny them both and eventually, sooner rather than later, perhaps be the cause of both their deaths.
•CHAPTER 12•
“How do you know Thor isn’t the traitor in your ranks?” Lawe asked as she lay sprawled against his naked chest, exhausted, limp and drowsy as the sun rose bright and warm the next morning.
“Because I know.” She yawned, wondering if she had time for a nap.
They’d had breakfast earlier, then they’d had each other for a bit of early dessert. She was at least two days behind schedule and rather than rushing to pack and leave, she was instead considering a late morning nap. If only Lawe had been kind and had not begun questioning her.
“How did he find you, baby?” he asked. “You didn’t tell him you were leaving. You didn’t tell anyone.”
“He followed Gideon, remember?” She wished he would just drop it. Defending Thor wasn’t on her agenda. She needed a nap, then possibly dinner before she hit the road with two grouchy, territorial, overprotective men.
